Using Undergraduate Teaching Scholars in a Laboratory Course for Non-Science Majors

Although laboratory instruction for non-science majors is a major goal of higher education, its implementation is often difficult in practice. Non-science students are often uncomfortable with a laboratory environment and require close supervision for the laboratory instruction to be effective. To address this problem, support from the New York Collaborative for Excellence in Teacher Preparation (NYCETP) was used to recruit and train undergraduate Teaching Scholars to assist in the instructional laboratories of NYU’s core science program. The Teaching Scholar was paired with a graduate student laboratory instructor to create a “teaching team.” Responses on student evaluations show that the arrangement enhanced student learning in the laboratory because both instructors were present during the laboratory session to provide assistance and answer questions. New initiatives in the project include recruiting students from both science and science education programs, thereby fostering interaction on methods of effective laboratory instruction

Quantifying fisher responses to environmental and regulatory dynamics in marine systems

Thesis (Ph.D.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2017Commercial fisheries are part of an inherently complicated cycle. As fishers have adopted new technologies and larger vessels to compete for resources, fisheries managers have adapted regulatory structures to sustain stocks and to mitigate unintended impacts of fishing (e.g., bycatch). Meanwhile, the ecosystems that are targeted by fishers are affected by a changing climate, which in turn forces fishers to further adapt, and subsequently, will require regulations to be updated. From the management side, one of the great limitations for understanding how changes in fishery environments or regulations impact fishers has been a lack of sufficient data for resolving their behaviors. In some fisheries, observer programs have provided sufficient data for monitoring the dynamics of fishing fleets, but these programs are expensive and often do not cover every trip or vessel. In the last two decades however, vessel monitoring systems (VMS) have begun to provide vessel location data at regular intervals such that fishing effort and behavioral decisions can be resolved across time and space for many fisheries. I demonstrate the utility of such data by examining the responses of two disparate fishing fleets to environmental and regulatory changes. This study was one of "big data" and required the development of nuanced approaches to process and model millions of records from multiple datasets. I thus present the work in three components: (1) How can we extract the information that we need? I present a detailed characterization of the types of data and an algorithm used to derive relevant behavioral aspects of fishing, like the duration and distances traveled during fishing trips; (2) How do fishers' spatial behaviors in the Bering Sea pollock fishery change in response to environmental variability; and (3) How were fisher behaviors and economic performances affected by a series of regulatory changes in the Gulf of Mexico grouper-tilefish longline fishery? I found a high degree of heterogeneity among vessel behaviors within the pollock fishery, underscoring the role that markets and processor-level decisions play in facilitating fisher responses to environmental change. In the Gulf of Mexico, my VMS-based approach estimated unobserved fishing effort with a high degree of accuracy and confirmed that the regulatory shift (e.g., the longline endorsement program and catch share program) yielded the intended impacts of reducing effort and improving both the economic performance and the overall harvest efficiency for the fleet. Overall, this work provides broadly applicable approaches for testing hypotheses regarding the dynamics of spatial behaviors in response to regulatory and environmental changes in a diversity of fisheries around the world.General introduction -- Chapter 1 Using vessel monitoring system data to identify and characterize trips made by fishing vessels in the United States North Pacific -- Chapter 2 Paths to resilience: Alaska pollock fleet uses multiple fishing strategies to buffer against environmental change in the Bering Sea -- Chapter 3 Vessel monitoring systems (VMS) reveal increased fishing efficiency following regulatory change in a bottom longline fishery -- General Conclusions

Cohesion and Factors of Sport

This research was done to see how player demographics and other factors of sport effect team cohesion of a soccer program at a Division III level. In this study different demographics such as year in college, transfer status, and how many years you have been playing were explored to see if they impacted the amount of cohesion on the team. Additionally, other factors of sport such as gender, coaching styles, effective student leaders, the wins and goals met as a team, and how athletes interact off the field were also taken into consideration and compared to the amount of cohesion that exist on the team. It was found that nine different factors of sport play a significant role in the amount of cohesion that exist, but no player demographics played a significant role. This research can help inform current or upcoming coaches, captains/leaders, and athletic departments on different factors that help and discourage the amount of cohesion that exist on a team and how it effects factors of a team

Radiation protection for manned space activities

The Earth's natural radiation environment poses a hazard to manned space activities directly through biological effects and indirectly through effects on materials and electronics. The following standard practices are indicated that address: (1) environment models for all radiation species including uncertainties and temporal variations; (2) upper bound and nominal quality factors for biological radiation effects that include dose, dose rate, critical organ, and linear energy transfer variations; (3) particle transport and shielding methodology including system and man modeling and uncertainty analysis; (4) mission planning that includes active dosimetry, minimizes exposure during extravehicular activities, subjects every mission to a radiation review, and specifies operational procedures for forecasting, recognizing, and dealing with large solar flaes

Hopf Structures on Ambiskew Polynomial Rings

We derive necessary and sufficient conditions for an ambiskew polynomial ring to have a Hopf algebra structure of a certain type. This construction generalizes many known Hopf algebras, for example U(sl2), U_q(sl2) and the enveloping algebra of the 3-dimensional Heisenberg Lie algebra. In a torsion-free case we describe the finite-dimensional simple modules, in particular their dimensions and prove a Clebsch-Gordan decomposition theorem for the tensor product of two simple modules. We construct a Casimir type operator and prove that any finite-dimensional weight module is semisimple.Comment: 23 page

Shield weight optimization using Monte Carlo transport calculations

Outlines are given of the theory used in FASTER-3 Monte Carlo computer program for the transport of neutrons and gamma rays in complex geometries. The code has the additional capability of calculating the minimum weight layered unit shield configuration which will meet a specified dose rate constraint. It includes the treatment of geometric regions bounded by quadratic and quardric surfaces with multiple radiation sources which have a specified space, angle, and energy dependence. The program calculates, using importance sampling, the resulting number and energy fluxes at specified point, surface, and volume detectors. Results are presented for sample problems involving primary neutron and both primary and secondary photon transport in a spherical reactor shield configuration. These results include the optimization of the shield configuration

Magnetic white dwarfs in the Early Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

We have identified 7 new magnetic DA white dwarfs in the Early Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Our selection strategy has also recovered all the previously known magnetic white dwarfs contained in the SDSS EDR, KUV03292+0035 and HE0330-0002. Analysing the SDSS fibre spectroscopy of the magnetic DA white dwarfs with our state-of-the-art model spectra, we find dipole field strengths 1.5<=B_d<=63MG and effective temperatures 8500<=Teff<=39000K. As a conservative estimate, we expect that the complete SDSS will increase the number of known magnetic white dwarfs by a factor 3.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysic